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Peter Madden  OBE

Professor Peter Madden

OBE

Professor of Practice in Future Cities

School of Geography and Planning

Email
MaddenP1@cardiff.ac.uk
Telephone
+44 29225 10949
Campuses
Glamorgan Building, Room Room 1.51, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff, CF10 3WA

Overview

I'm Professor of Practice in Future Cities, helping to engage with businesses and city administrations to stimulate collaborative work and maximise research impact.

My teaching, research, and practice focuses on innovating for the city of the future, understanding why urban life is changing and how citizens and business can thrive in a hyper-connected, increasingly urban, and resource-constrained world. I have helped dozens of leading businesses and city administrations navigate the future to create more sustainable, vibrant, places.

I have held senior roles in government, not-for-profits, and the private sector, and worked with cities across the world. I am now using my practical experience, my international networks and my understanding of what stakeholders want from academia, to help to promote the practical application of scholarship for the benefit of industry, government and society.

I work part-time in the University alongside my other roles.

Biography

I currently do a number of roles as well as working for Cardiff University. I do strategic foresight and future-proofing for cities, places, and real estate through my company Vivid Futures. I Chair Building with Nature, which provides the UK's first benchmark for the design and maintenance of green infrastructure. And I sit on the Advisory Board of Igloo Regeneration.

Previously I was CEO of Future Cities Catapult - a centre of expertise on urban innovation, CEO of Forum for the Future, Head of Policy at the Environment Agency, Ministerial Advisor to the UK Government, and Director of Green Alliance. I've held positions on the Board of The Crown Estate and of Bristol Energy, the Advisory Board of Trane Technologies, the Smart London Board, UK Government Smart Cities Forum, Groundwork UK Board, UK Roundtable on Sustainable Development, and as Chair of UK Community Energy Coalition. I present and lecture around the world on futures and urban innovation, and write regular articles on the future of cities and real estate.

I completed undergraduate studies at Oxford University, before undertaking a postgraduate degree at UCL. I have done additional courses with the Institute for the Future, the Leadership Trust, the London Business School, the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, Institute for the Future and Harvard Busines School..

I was awarded an OBE in 2015 for services to sustainable development.